The invention relates to an installation for the person-related provisioning of medicament-dispensers with units for administering medicaments—tablets, coated pills or capsules—which are to be taken by patients in a defined chronological sequence, wherein the medicaments are arranged in an arrangement within the medicament-dispenser which is correlated with the ingestion times, and wherein the medicaments are supplied in standard blister packs which are arranged in “vertical” stacks that contain a plurality of standard blister packs which are arranged one above the other and comprise a defined number of trough-shaped blister cups which each contain an administering unit and are covered with a blister film, said installation having the other generic features mentioned in the pre-characterising clause of patent claim 1.
The installation comprises de-blistering devices which mediate an automatically-occurring, separating removal, from the blister packs, of the medicaments which can then be fed, by means of a delivery apparatus, into receiving compartments in the particular medicament-dispenser which are assigned to the individual administering units. A transporting apparatus is provided, by means of which the medicament-dispensers are supplied to the particular delivery apparatus, for the automatic provisioning of which there are provided electrically controllable drives for the de-blistering devices, the delivery apparatus and the dispenser transport, control of which is mediated by an electronic control unit which generates, from a system for processing machine-readable, person-related data that can be read and processed in a fixedly defined correlation with the transport of the medicament-dispensers, control signals which are required for the provisioning sequence.
For the purpose of preparing and facilitating the de-blistering operation—the removal of selected medicaments from the particular blister cup of the standard blister pack—those regions of the blister film which cover the cup of the selected medicament in each case are subjected to a scratching and cutting treatment by means of a punching tool which is held in readiness in a configuration which is adapted to medicaments. An installation of this type forms the subject of a patent application published in Germany, DE 10 2005 047 429 A1, by this Applicant, the teachings of which are incorporated by reference herein.
In the case of the subject of the earlier patent application, there are provided, inside sub-units of the installation as a whole, which has a modular construction to that extent, rotatable blister-pack stores within which there are associated, with the individual medicaments, relatively narrow sector regions within which a stack of a specific kind of blister pack is arranged in each case. The kind of standard blister pack which is required for provisioning the medicament-dispenser which is currently to be filled in each case is brought, by rotation of the store, into a distributing position in which de-blistering by means of suitable tools, and then the feeding of the de-blistered medicament into the particular medicament-dispenser, takes place.
In a typical configuration of a de-blistering and provisioning unit of this kind, the said unit is arranged between two rotatable medicament stores which are used in an alternating manner for making available blister packs for provisioning the dispensers, the said units—two stores in the form of cylindrical columns and the de-blistering and provisioning unit—forming, so to speak, one module of the installation which, viewed individually, fulfils the basic functions of the installation. The result of this, however, is that an expansion of the known installation to an increased variety of medicaments gives rise to comparatively high expenditure, since an expansion of capacity by one module, which comprises two symmetrically arranged rotary magazines for at least twelve different kinds of medicament in each case, implies illogically high expenditure for practical purposes in a large number of cases.
The installation according to the earlier patent application is designed for the provisioning of medicament-dispensers which have a, so to speak, single-row arrangement of receiving compartments, that is to say a configuration which, although it is highly suitable for making available a patient's daily requirement, is nevertheless not suitable for the systematic reception of an entire weekly requirement, such as is expedient, and therefore often also required, in the case of prolonged treatments.
Added to this is the fact that the installation according to the earlier patent application is subject, on account of the cylindrical stores of relatively large construction, to limitations as regards the cycle time since it is necessary, depending upon the localising of the medicament blister pack within the rotary magazine, to travel through relatively large angles of rotation in order to call at the provisioning position, and it is also necessary to move relatively large masses, so that, notwithstanding the possibility of using higher-powered drives, an increased amount of time is required because of the fact that high rotary accelerations are to be avoided since they only lead to undesirable forces acting upon the medicaments and can damage the latter, something which would not be acceptable.
Embodiments of the invention improve an installation of the type initially mentioned, to the effect that an increased provisioning output —an increased number of provisioned medicament-dispensers per unit of time—is achieved with comparatively little expenditure in terms of construction, and the installation can also be brought, in a simple manner, into a configuration that satisfies a desired provisioning capacity.
According to this, the modules that form the installation as a whole comprise, in each case, a magazine shaft in which a fairly large number of standard blister packs are held in readiness in a stack, a punching apparatus and also a delivery apparatus, wherein the modules are arranged, along the transporting apparatus which is normally of rectilinear construction, at distances from one another which correspond to a multiple of the distance between the receiving compartments of the dispensers, for example a multiple which is greater, by 1, than the number of consecutive lines of receiving compartments, viewed in the direction of transport, of the medicament-dispensers which it is planned to provision. The best possible utilisation of the time for provisioning the medicament-dispensers, which is subdivided into cyclical intervals, corresponds to this arrangement.
On their lower side, the magazine shafts are delimited by a slide which forms, so to speak, the bottom of the shaft and by which the lowest standard blister pack in a stack in each case can be received, after a standard blister pack which has been previously emptied by provisioning operations is removed, under which circumstances the standard blister pack received by the slide can be pushed out again into the de-blistering and provisioning apparatus arranged outside the shaft.
The slides of the individual modules of the installation are constructed in two parts and have a plate-shaped guide part which is guided, so as to be displaceable forwards and backwards horizontally with respect to the transporting apparatus, at least within the particular magazine shaft, in guides which are arranged on the shaft-delimiting walls which extend parallel to one another, and also a frame part which permits form-locking reception of that standard blister pack in a stack which is lowest in each case, in such a way that the said blister pack cannot shift out of the frame part either laterally or in the direction of displacement, while said frame part must be moved, for de-blistering purposes, to the positioning for discharging the particular medicament.
This configuration of the installation according to the invention is distinguished by a particularly simple construction which also leads to high reliability of functioning, and the installation can be precisely adapted to the variety of medicaments necessary for provisioning medicament-dispensers, by adding or even removing installation modules with little expenditure in each case, a fact which ultimately leads to the shortest possible cycle times.
In a particularly simple embodiment of the installation modules which is reduced to the essential basic functions, said modules may be configured in such a way that calling at the distributing position at which the de-blistered medicament is dispensed to the medicament-dispenser takes place simply by the onward displacement of the standard blister pack beyond the de-blistering position by one receiving-compartment interval, which naturally presupposes that the cutting of the blister covering and the discharging of the medicament from the blister cup which has been made ready for opening can take place with the blister cup in the same orientation, something which is possible in any case if the standard blister packs are oriented in such a way that the blister caps are arranged so as to point downwards, and the cutting of the blister caps by means of the punching tool can likewise take place “from below” in this orientation.
In a preferred configuration of the installation modules according to the features in claim 2, the frame part of the particular slide is rotatable, relative to the—plate-shaped—guide part, by 180° about the common central longitudinal axis of the frame part and guide part in such a way that said frame part can be rotated, for example, out of an orientation in which the blister caps are arranged so as to point upwards and cutting or punching-out is possible “from above” by means of a vertically displaceable punching tool, and into an orientation in which said blister caps are arranged so as to point downwards, and the discharging of the particular medicament into the medicament-dispensers which are arranged “underneath it”—underneath the frame part—is possible, and takes place through the fact that the—upwardly pointing—bulges in the blister cups are acted upon by means of a die, under which circumstances the said blister cups are deformed and the medicaments are able to drop down while evading the parts of the blister caps.
In view of the great diversity of industrially produced types of standard blister packs, it is particularly expedient if the modules from which provisioning installations according to the invention can be erected can be adapted individually to the medicament blister pack used for distribution purposes, in order to guarantee reliable functioning of the particular module.
In connection with a configuration, which is provided for according to claim 3, of the magazine shafts of the installation modules as a C-profile arrangement which is open towards the direction of transport and in which the clear distance between narrow end faces, which point towards one another, of narrow, unattached profile legs is significantly smaller than the distance between mutually parallel profile-leg faces of the C-shaped shaft-profile arrangement which mediates the lateral guidance of standard blister packs, it is particularly advantageous if the distance between these lateral guide legs of the C-profile arrangement and/or the distance of vertical guide faces thereof from the said opposed, narrow guide-profile faces of the unattached, narrow profile legs that delimit the opening, can be adjusted in order to be able to adapt the guides for the stacked standard blister packs to their geometrical dimensions in a simple manner.
The installation, which is outlined by the features in claim 5 in terms of construction and principle of functioning, is expediently constructed in such a way, in the event of the standard blister packs comprising two or more rows of blister cups, that a number of punching tools that corresponds to the number of rows of blisters is provided, by means of which punching tools the blister caps of one of the rows of blister cups can be cut in each case, under which circumstances the punching tools can be actuated jointly, but that, for the purpose of discharging the de-blistered medicaments, separately actuatable discharging tools are provided so that the medicaments, whose blister packs have been jointly prepared for the removal of the medicaments, can be dispensed into the particular medicament-dispensers in chronological succession.
It is accordingly advantageous, for the purposes of a simple configuration of the installation, if, in accordance with claim 8, a common actuating drive is provided for the punching tools, and if, in accordance with claim 9, a drive for actuating the discharging tools which is capable of travelling between the discharging positions is present for the individual actuation of said discharging tools. A drum-shaped tool-carrier, which is configured and mounted in accordance with claim 10 and on which both punching tools for opening the blister cups and discharging tools for dispensing the de-blistered medicaments to the medicament-dispensers to be filled are arranged so as to be displaceable “vertically”, that is to say perpendicularly to the course of the transport paths of the medicament-dispensers, is preferably configured in such a way that, as a result of the displacing positions of the slide of the particular installation module within mutually aligned guide grooves or apertures in the blister-pack shaft of the particular module, and of its tool-carrier, there is determined, within close tolerances, the position in which alone the tool-carrier, for which the features of claim 12 indicate a configuration which is simple in terms of both design and control technology, can be rotated for the functionally suitable positioning and orientation of the punching tools and of the discharging tool which is used in each case.
The features in claim 13 indicate a method of mounting the drum-shaped tool-carrier with the aid of rollers which roll along, so to speak, on the periphery of said tool-carrier and which are preferably provided in the arrangement according to claim 14.
Rollers of this type are able, as a result of a form-locking engagement of splines on the rollers, which splines have a radially projecting edge of an annular-disc-shaped bearing part of the drum-shaped tool-carrier, to mediate both smooth-running mounting and also reliable protection against axial dislocation of the tool-carrier, under which circumstances the rotatory drive of said tool-carrier, which is required for changing the latter over from the de-blistering position into the discharging position, may be constructed, according to claim 16, so as to act upon only one of the rollers and, if necessary, driving coupling of all the rollers can be realised by means of a driving belt which wraps around said rollers and can be kept under elastic tension.
In accordance with the features of claims 17 and 18, the installation according to the invention can also be designed in a simple manner in such a way that medicament-dispensers, which contain a patient's weekly requirement, arranged according to the ingestion times and days, can be provisioned in an efficient manner.